Midnight Bookstore

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

Zhou Ze tipped his toes to push the drawer out, but he heard a metallic click, implying that someone had locked the drawer from the outside.

He was trapped. There was no way out.

Suddenly, Zhou Ze felt like he was back in time, when he was placed inside the coffin.

However, this time, Zhou Ze did not lose his mind, nor his temper. He simply reached out his hand and knocked.

“What do you want?” Zhou Ze said. He did not think it was a person who had pushed the drawer in and locked it, unless the person was a lunatic. Zhou Ze also did not believe that he had such bad luck.

He remembered he had closed the door after entering the mortuary. A lunatic that knew the passcode to open the door? Who would believe that?

Therefore, Zhou Ze assumed that something was trying to help him, and was being thorough with it.

However, only silence followed after Zhou Ze asked the question. He simply could not be bothered. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep. This time, it did not take him long to fall asleep.

After all, he had not slept for two days, and so many things had happened. The fatigue that he had accumulated was shocking. Even the greatest storm could not stop him from falling asleep.

——

After a deep slumber, Zhou Ze opened his eyes. He felt refreshed and energetic, but his body was stiff from the cold.

His body was crazily stiff. Zhou Ze tried to move around in the limited space. The crackling sound of his bones felt oddly satisfying.

Zhou Ze’s fingers grew longer and turned black with a strange glow. The stiffness of his body and the cold that ordinary people could not endure were slowly moving toward his fingers.

The process did not last long, but Zhou Ze no longer felt so cold and uncomfortable.

He tried kicking again and the drawer slid out.

-The drawer is not locked?- Zhou Ze was quite surprised. He sat up, went down from the drawer and pushed it back.

His clothes were rigid, like hard cardboard hanging on him. It felt uncomfortable. Zhou Ze observed his surroundings.

The mortuary of the hospital was not very large. It was a lot smaller compared to hospitals in bigger cities, but it still stored a lot of dead bodies.

Zhou Ze had no idea who pushed the drawer in for him. Now that he thought about it, it was going to be quite troublesome.

Luckily, they had unlocked the drawer again after he had fallen asleep. Zhou Ze did not want to stir up any more trouble.

He headed for the exit. However, he came to a stop when he passed by the stretchers that were covered by pieces of white cloth. There was nothing out of ordinary about the dead bodies, including the old woman covered by a flowery blanket.

However, Zhou Ze still halted in his tracks. He clearly remembered that the old woman was supposed to be lying the opposite way.

It did not make sense that the person in charge of the mortuary would come and turn the old woman to the other side without doing anything else while he was asleep.

Zhou Ze went closer to the old woman’s body and said, “If it was you, you should show up now, or else I’m leaving.”

The old woman might have pushed the drawer in and locked it to pull a prank on him, but she had still unlocked the drawer, meaning that she was not trying to harm him.

It was likely that she was worried that someone would discover him when they saw a drawer that was not locked. After all, it was quite easy to see which drawers were not locked from the outside.

Nothing happened after he waited for half a minute. Zhou Ze decided not to waste any time further.

As he turned around and was about to leave, he heard a sigh coming from behind.

Zhou Ze hated that. It was an old woman, yet she still had to act like an immature girl, pretending to be shy and welcoming his offer of help with reluctance.

Guess he was wrong for judging someone based on their age, but it was reasonable for a man to be more tolerant of a beautiful ghost.

If Nie Xiaoqian’s face was full of wrinkles and she had yellow buckteeth sticking out of her mouth, would Ning Caichen even bother having a human-ghost relationship with her?

{TL Note: Nie Xiaoqian and Ning Caichen are from a classic Ghost story from the book ‘Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio’.}

Zhou Ze turned and looked behind him.

An old woman with grayed hair stood there. She was wiping her tears with a discolored handkerchief.

Unfortunately, ghosts did not have tears, so in Zhou Ze’s eyes, the old woman was simply crying out loud without tears.

“Go on, I won’t disturb you,” Zhou Ze prepared to take his leave.

He realized how pragmatic he was, his attitude toward ghosts was highly dependent on their looks too.

“Help me, I have money,” the old woman suddenly said.

“Sure,” Zhou Ze replied. He desperately needed money.

This goddamn Xu Le only had less than two hundred yuan in Alipay and WeChat. Together with the eleven hundred that the murderer gave him, he had less than thirteen hundred yuan!

On the other hand, it was very likely that Zhou Ze’s house and savings had all been donated to the orphanage. He basically had nothing.

“My money is in a hidden drawer inside my cabinet. It was a yellow cabinet. There were thirty thousand Yuan, a jade bracelet and a jade hairpin that were given to me when I married. I don’t know how much they were worth. I died too quickly, so I didn’t get the chance to tell my sons about them. I’m worried that they won’t find them,” the old woman said.

Zhou Ze nodded and said, “I’ll be taking a portion from it.”

The old woman seemed reluctant, but she still nodded and said, “That’s reasonable.”

The old woman knew that without Zhou Ze’s help, her sons would never find the possessions that she had left behind.

——

After leaving the hospital, Zhou Ze hailed a cab to a place called Xingdong Town in Tongcheng. It was not too far away, and close to Tongcheng’s airport.

Zhou Ze went asking around the hospital before heading out. The old woman had passed away soon after she was admitted into the hospital for an emergency. Her family simply left her at the hospital, and they still owed the hospital a significant amount of fees.

Half an hour later, Zhou Ze arrived at the town and followed the old woman’s description to where she lived.

It was a custom-built two-story building, with a small thatched hut beside it.

When Zhou Ze found the place, he saw a few workers demolishing the thatched hut.

Zhou Ze walked up to one of the workers and gave him a cigarette before he asked, “It’s almost New Year, still working?”

“Exactly why we’re working hard to earn some money. Besides, we are from the same town too,” the worker said.

“What’s happening here?” Zhou Ze asked and took a closer look. Two of the workers were removing the roof. The bricks were set aside as they would be used again. As for the inside of the hut, it was completely empty, not even a wooden stool could be seen, let alone the cabinet that the old woman had mentioned.

“Their mother just passed away. She was staying in the hut all by herself, so they decided to demolish the hut and build a kitchen instead,” the worker leaned closer, signaling Zhou Ze to help him light up the cigarette. He then said with a smile, “Look, the guy that just walked past is her eldest son.”

Zhou Ze looked into the direction and saw a man with slightly grayed hair and bruises on his face.

“The five sons were beating the crap out of one another for the little money that their mother had. I bet they are going to fight over these bricks too. I feel sorry for her, they didn’t even go to the hospital and take their mother’s body back, as none of them are willing to pay the fees,” the man said.

“What about the things inside the old woman’s hut?” It was what Zhou Ze had come for. Judging from the old woman’s description, the thirty thousand Chinese Yuan was all her savings, but the jade bracelet and the jade hairpin could easily be worth a few hundred thousand Chinese Yuan.

“They were sold long ago, right after the old woman was admitted into the hospital,” the man took a few puffs of the cigarette and said, “I’m going back to work.”

Zhou Ze smacked his lips. He was stuck between laughter and tears. He had wasted his time coming all the way here.

Not only did he fail to retrieve what the old woman had left, even her sons had missed it. The person whose hands that the cabinet ended up in was in luck.

Zhou Ze was rather annoyed. Having no money was quite a huge problem. He was not willing to use his power to make money, even though it could easily earn him a fortune. He almost died from the pain after he saved the little girl last time. Heaven knew what other problems he would find himself in if he kept misusing the power.

He could not tell if there were deities up in the sky, but he knew he would definitely find Hell if he kept digging into the ground, since he had been there once.

He knew he was not human, but he was currently in the human world. He clearly remembered how the old man had screamed that some unknown party had found him.

But where was he going to get money from?

Zhou Ze needed money. Putting his intention to get rid of his identity as a live-in son-in-law aside, wouldn’t he need money to buy him a huge freezer? It did not make sense for him to keep paying the mortuary of the hospital a visit every day, right?

Zhou Ze helplessly lit up a cigarette. He was agitated.

Meanwhile, the phone in his pocket rang. Zhou Ze took out his phone. It was a strange number. He accepted the call.

“Hello,” Zhou Ze said.

“Brother, the goods have arrived. When are you coming to inspect them? The cops have been very strict lately. It took quite an effort to get the goods,” the man on the other end whispered.

Zhou Ze opened his mouth. He did not make a sound.

In the meantime, his impression of Xu Le started to change…